


but sunshine of heaven beamed bright on thy waking

by noahfronsenburg



Category: Tales of Legendia
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Freeform, Tales of Femslash Week 2018, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 08:16:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15384543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noahfronsenburg/pseuds/noahfronsenburg
Summary: Or, or, or.





	but sunshine of heaven beamed bright on thy waking

**Author's Note:**

> for tales of femslash week 2018, day 3: sunshine
> 
> title from [sacred harp 158: funeral thought.](http://www.sacredharpbremen.org/lieder/100-bis-199/158-funeral-thought)
> 
> this fic can be put down as:  
> me: so what if i wrote semi timeline-reset fenimore/shirley  
> cherrim: do it  
> cherrim, moments later: wait, no. no. don't do it. i take that back. nobody should ever ask you to do anything  
> me: t o o l a t e .

Fenimore and Thyra are born on the same day their parents die. Their mother passes in the hollow pangs of childbirth, their father is cut down in a confrontation with an Orerines scouting group. They are named _hope_ and _blessing_ —perhaps a misplaced prayer that something good will come from their lives. But, when she is learning how to write Relares as a child, Fenimore struggles for a long time to learn to reverse  _xe_ , and she reads her name another way.

A curse.

A corpse.

Buried.

 

 

When Fenimore is eight, she has a dream. In her dream, she stands atop a cliff above the ocean. She can taste the salt on the air and against her tongue, she can hear the breeze as it whispers overhead. Around her lay Ferines bodies, beyond them soldiers with weapons drawn. Behind her is the most beautiful girl in the world. Ahead of her is death: sooner than she expected, but later than she had hoped.

In her dream, Fenimore takes the girl’s hands. They’re strong, holding her hands tightly back. The girl smells like water. The clearest, cleanest water. She smells like _home_ ; a thing Fenimore hardly knows or understands. The girl smiles, and cries, and cries, and cries. Her hair is sunlight, striking deep into the ocean currents, glowing amidst bubbles and fine as crystal and silver.

Fenimore wants to kiss her tears away, take her in her arms. In her dream she takes her hands and pushes the swords away, and they part like the tides, as easy as grass she runs through in the field. They can’t harm them.

And then they run, and it’s like flying.

 

 

Ferines die young.

Her own parents were only nineteen.

Fenimore accepts the inevitable, even if Thyra won’t. She knows what her future has in store.

Is it not better to take it in your arms, and welcome it home?

 

 

She tries to invent other ways that her life could end. She imagines alternate futures, pretend pasts. There is a life where they meet as children, and Fenimore never has to sell her out to anyone. They hide in their Village, and the Orerines ignore two children dressed alike, no traitors branding their backs.

In another life, Fenimore learns to use her Eres, rather than hiding in the safe vestibules of the ossuaries their lives have become—shadows and soldiers do not contain her. She is made of the pound of waves against the shore and the scream of typhoon winds and _vengeance_ , and protection for all whom she loves. She will stand atop the corpses before they wash out with the tides, not run, not hide.

The drop above the sea is a long way down, but the water will catch them and cradle them, Fenimore knows this. Nerifes will welcome them home, wrap them in warm currents in the ocean below and bear them up or down or hither and yon, or any which way. Their Teriques will carry them along the air when they want to fly, let them run and skip over the waves, and their hair will glow, bright as sunshine, even far beneath the sea. The freedom they both long for will be theirs.

Or they could just run.

Or they could take hands and walk forward into death together, side by side.

Or Fenimore could kiss her when she wants to, the first time, the last time, save her early enough they have a life ahead to lead.

Or, or, or.

 

 

When Fenimore is seventeen, she stands atop a cliff above the sea. The adrenaline in her ears pounds with her heartbeat, one-two-three too fast. Shirley, who is half coward half saint all savior, holds her hand. Their fingers are laced tightly together, and Fenimore can feel Shirley’s heartbeat against her skin. It’s just as fast as her own.

In the sleeve of her dress, Shirley’s fingers curl and twist. Fenimore is not her shield, nor her sword—Shirley, halfway to Merines Ascendant, teetering on the edge of greatness and divinity, a goddess and a harbinger, needs neither. Fenimore is her rock, the moon to the tides of the sea, to tether her down, to bring her home. She is still mortal. She is still fallible.

The girl in her dreams, beautiful and ideal beyond reckoning, is only all the more perfect in her imperfections. For every flaw that she possesses she grows all the more radiant, until she fain alights with it. Shirley may be imperfect, but Fenimore is no better, and in their foibles they have found salvation. They hold tight to one another, them against the world, as the swords point inward, a ring that leaves them at the centre: alone, not alone, together, separate.

No way forward but unto death. No way back but the sea.

Shirley’s breath is loud in her ear. She is flushed with fear and terror. Beyond the soldiers, Maurits stands, waiting. Below them the ocean crashes, Nerifes twisted with agony and anger and yes perhaps even _fear_ , the sea lashing as the Merines wavers. The sun above glares, almost too-bright, a haze and halo that glints off of the blades around them like a weapon but from the flowers Fenimore braided into Shirley’s hair like a gift, steel against gold.

Xelhes has two meanings. Fenimore learned this when she was very young.

A corpse can be a blessing, if you bury it in the right place. Flowers grow on graves; crops flourish. Communities thrive. People prosper. Decay is the breath of life; all that surges and sprouts and seeds comes from that which lays buried. The Ferines have built empires upon crypts; kingdoms from catacombs.

Fenimore lets go of Shirley’s hand for the last time, and steps forward, into her chosen fate.

 

 

Sunlight in the water. Sunlight up above. Sunlight on her face; the warmth of Shirley’s love. Her hair, gold as wheatgrass, her eyes clear as the sea. Resplendent, beloved. Fenimore will make her free.

She cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. If the soft touch on her face is sunlight, or Shirley’s hair. If the last thing she sees is one, or the other, filtered down through deep water, to where her blessing is waiting, waiting, waiting like a tomb.

 

 

There are no dreams in death.

Only waiting.

Only home.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr/twitter @jonphaedrus  
> pillowfort @prof


End file.
